Born Wicked

Page 39

Sachi hands me a cup of tea—plain, the way I like it. The cup has a little web of cracks around the handle. “Then we can pool our knowledge. I hear you’ve been visiting the bookshop. Everyone says they’ve got books on magic—on the history of witchery, too. My father hasn’t been able to find them, but he’s certain they exist. I want to know what’s in them. Mrs. Belastra would never give them to me, but she might let you see them.”
I take a sip of tea, eyeing Sachi over the rim of the cup. “You haven’t told anyone about this suspicion of yours, have you?”
“No. I wouldn’t do that. Honestly, I wouldn’t,” Sachi swears.
“So you’re not blackmailing me?”
Sachi sets her teacup down with a clatter. “No! I can be useful, too, you know. Father trusts me. He thinks Rory and I are just silly little girls. I can see why you’ve stayed home so much, if you’re afraid of being discovered. But it must be awfully dull. I can make you the second-most popular girl in town. Or third, after Rory.” She rolls her eyes as if to show just how little she thinks of the town girls and their limited possibilities. “If you’re my new best friend, Father won’t suspect you.”
I look at Rory, who’s nibbling on a scone. She’s pulled the pins from her black hair so it falls in soft waves over her shoulders. Why are we having this conversation here, in front of her?
“No,” Sachi snaps, smacking a small bottle out of Rory’s hand. It rolls across the rosewood tea table. “Do you want to be likeher, drunk by midafternoon?”
Rory sinks onto the sofa. “No,” she says pitifully. “But I didn’t want any of this, did I?”
The penny drops. “You’re not a witch, too?”
“Why not?” Rory grits her jaw, her overbite pronounced, and stares at the bottle.“Evanesco,”she says, and it disappears.
“Good work,” Sachi praises.
This is without a doubt the most bizarre afternoon of my life.
It seems my sisters and I aren’t the only witches in town after all.
“The drink—it dulls the magic,” Rory explains. “I don’t feel itatme all the time.”
“You don’t feel much of anything, and that’s a problem,” Sachi says. “You’ve got to keep your wits about you. Brother Winfield is itching for a reason to make Nils stop seeing you.”
Rory slumps across the sofa, kicking her voluminous yellow skirts out of the way. Crumbs drop carelessly to the threadbare carpet. “What do I care if he does?”
“We need Nils. He helps you keep up appearances,” Sachi says patiently, as though she’s said it a hundred times before. It’s the same tone I use with Tess and Maura.
I think of how Rory’s always smiling up at Nils, always touching him. “It’s all just for show? You’re not really in love with him?”
Rory barks her broken laugh. “Lord, no. He’s dumb as bricks. Handsome, though, isn’t he?”
I frown, and Sachi looks at me hard. “Oh, and I suppose you’ve never used anyone or lied to keep your secret safe?”
But I have. And I will again.
“Fine,” I say. “You’re right. I’m a witch.”
It’s a dangerous thing, saying those words out loud. It feels momentous.
Sachi smiles. “Prove it.”
Chapter 12
IT’S A CHALLENGE, AND I’VE NEVER been one to back down from a challenge. Not when Paul dared me to climb an apple tree or walk the pigpen fence, and not now. I peer at the picturesque forest scene carved into the tea table, at the spot where Rory’s bottle disappeared. I can feel the glamour hovering over it, the magic practically shimmering in the air. My sisters and I are fairly well matched, which makes breaking their glamours difficult. Apparently it’s easier if the witch isn’t as strong as you—and Rory’s not. I push against her magic until her glamour cracks and I can see the bottle again. The golden-brown liquor winks in the sunlight.Commuto,I think. But it’s still only a bottle. I take a deep breath. My magic feels tenuous at best, whisperthin and shaky.
“Forget everything else and concentrate,” Sachi says. I glance at her, expecting scorn, but she’s smiling as though she’s eager to see me succeed. Mother never looked at me like that when we practiced. Anything to do with magic left her pinched and anxious.
Sachi’s right. Finn—the prophecy—Elena—the knowledge that my sisters and I aren’t the only witches in town—it’s all swirling around in my head, splintering my focus. I’m lucky I didn’t make the sitting room an aviary. I draw in another breath, filling my mind with a single intention, repeating the words over and over again.
“Commuto,”I say clearly.
Now there’s a sparrow perched on the table where the bottle was. Brown feathers, white chest. Rory shrieks, leaping out of her seat.
“I knew it.” Sachi throws her hands up, triumphant. “Nice work, Cate.”
“It isn’t nice, it’s horrid. Birds carry disease!” Rory protests.
“Real birds do.” Sachi pushes aside the heavy velvet drapes and unlatches the window behind her. She shoves it open, and cool air rushes into the room.
“Avolo,”she says, and the sparrow flies out with a flapping of wings.
“Show-off,” Rory complains, shivering. “Now where’s my brandy gone?”
Sachi looks at me, black eyes dancing. “Check the bushes?”
“How long have you been practicing?” Rory asks. She kicks off her slippers and stretches out on the red-flowered sofa as though we’re old, familiar friends who no longer need to stand on ceremony.
“Since I was eleven.” They both look impressed, so I don’t volunteer that I’ve hardly practiced since Mother died—that the spells I mastered at thirteen are the only ones I can manage at sixteen.
“I didn’t start until I was thirteen,” Sachi says. “Father preached against women’s inherent promiscuousness all through dinner and I went upstairs so angry, my magic exploded. I smashed all three of my looking glasses and the music box Renjiro sent me from New London. It took me a week to figure out how to fix them, and I had to find excuses to keep the maids out of my room the whole time. Couldn’t have Papa thinking his little girl had a temper.”
The first time I did magic, I was eleven, Maura barely ten, and Tess seven. It was a drowsy summer day and Paul was away. I was bored with being cooped up in the house, so I wheedled my sisters into coming outside and playing with me. The smell of roses and freshly cut grass surrounded us as we drew on the flagstones with chalk.
Maura and I got into a row about whether I’d smudged her drawing on purpose. She shoved me and I tripped into Tess, who fell and tore her stockings and scraped her knee. Maura said it was all my fault and that she was going to tell Mother. Tess just sat there, lip wobbling, knee bleeding. I was so angry, I wanted to shake Maura—I wanted her to be the one crying, her dress torn and smudged with chalk and blood.
I felt my anger simmer faster and faster until it boiled over. Something inside me swayed up and out my fingertips. Her green dress ripped. White chalk Xs slashed across the skirt. Blood splattered. At first I thought I was only imagining it, but then Tess’s eyes went wide as saucers and Maura started screaming her head off, and I knew they could see it, too. I tried to bribe them with promises of stories and sweets. I wasn’t much for listening to the Brothers’ sermons, but I knew about witches: how their magic sprang from Persephone’s marriage to the devil, how they were born wrong and wicked.